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@vgr

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Tiago Forte

@fortelabs

Oct 31

It's so sad that @ribbonfarm is retiring...

But the blog post announcing it does SUCH a good job of explaining why the blogging era has ended, what that means for how writing online is produced and consumed, and how that affects business models based on digital text

🧵👇

1. "The cultural reign of the blog, roughly 2000-20 or so, coincided with the second full chapter of the internet. Far more than aggregators, photo-sharing services, or social feeds, the blog was “Web 2.0.”"

Only now do we have the distance and sense of perspective to see blogging as just one era among many. I feel like I was practically raised on blogs, and it was difficult to imagine them ever going away

But it's now clear that blogs were native to a 20-year period that was early in the Internet's growth, when it was still somewhat difficult to get your writing live on a webpage. It was before distribution became all important, and having a reliable place people could go to was all you needed to stand out

It was also, as @vgr notes, a side effect of low interest rates, fueled by lots of underemployed pseudo-intellectuals.

2. "The maturing cozyweb phase we’re in right now, while it has its own intimate charms, to be found in the warren of discords, slacks, and group DMs we all inhabit these days, lacks the raw grandeur of the public social media era."

It's incredible how fragmented online writing has become – you can't post an external link on Twitter without getting buried in the algorithm, and half the time I do find a link it leads to a paywalled article, whether on Substack, a newspaper or magazine website, or Medium

We built all these platforms to enable distribution, but then distribution became so competitive as a result that paradoxically it became harder to break through the noise and reliably get your writing delivered to new audiences

And writing now undoubtedly lacks some of the "grandeur" and epicness that it once had, which is a major reason I've turned to writing books. Books still feel like they have an epic grandeur, a sense of a big idea that matters.

Read 4 tweets

Tiago Forte

@fortelabs

Oct 30

I finally read the How To Succeed At Mr. Beast PDF...

And I think it's the most important piece for understanding YouTube, the Creator Economy, and what it means to do business on the Internet today

It's also been completely misunderstood by all the online commentators...🧵

1. "Youtube is the future and I believe with every fiber of my body it’s going to keep growing year over year and in 5 years Youtube will be bigger than anyone will have ever imagined..."

The first thing you have to understand is that YouTube has basically won the Internet. It's not just one among many other similar platforms – it's fought a two-front war, against social media on one side and traditional TV on the other, and dominated both.

Like the U.S. emerging victorious from World War II after winning on both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts, it's about to reshape the Internet the same way the U.S. reshaped the world.

YouTube has the most longevity of any platform, the best creator monetization program, the most sophisticated algorithm and analytics, and the most vibrant and healthy ecosystem generally. It now constitutes 10% of ALL watch time, not just streaming, outpacing Netflix.

All of this means that whatever is happening on YT is disproportionally influential and important for understanding how the web is changing and will change.

2. "The three metrics you guys need to care about is Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP)."

Underlying this seemingly innocuous statement lies a core truth that is reshaping the Attention Economy now: increasingly, the only thing that matters is giving people what they want.

YT displays hundreds of different metrics, but these 3 represent the purest signal of what people want, based on their actual behavior, the hardest thing to fake.

For much of the Internet's history, what people wanted wasn't actually the driving priority. SEO and ads were about getting them to look at what companies wanted them to see. You were limited in what you could find by the "friends" in your "social network." There just wasn't that much content available generally, so you had to make do with what you could find.

All that's changed. Now it's not about how many ad dollars you can spend, how good your SEO is, or the features of your platform, since all platforms offer the same features.

The only differentiator is whether you can consistently deliver what people want, a true meritocracy, which for creators means a relentless, endless, global competition for eyeballs that you have to attract anew every single day.

Read 8 tweets

Tiago Forte

@fortelabs

Jul 29

DON’T store this information in your notetaking app 👇

My notetaking app (I use Evernote) is the center of my Second Brain ecosystem and the default place for capturing information. However, it's not the best place to store all types of information…

So what should you store elsewhere?

Let's talk about 4 types of information that are better off in other digital homes

Read 8 tweets

Tiago Forte

@fortelabs

Jul 4

People often ask me how values and goals play a role in building a Second Brain

How does everything fit together?

To me, it's a pyramid with several layers!

Let me explain...

The lower you go on the pyramid, the more fundamental and deeply rooted inside of you are the forces

It's more about your nature, your temperament, and who you are as a person

These things are slower to change, if at all

The higher you go on the pyramid, the easier it is to change and the more it has to change

You can be more tactical and leverage technology to help you

Read 8 tweets

Tiago Forte

@fortelabs

Jun 20

How to remember what to store in your Second Brain using INPUT

🧵

Newsletter reader Roman shared with me a clever acronym he developed to remember the criteria for what to save in his Second Brain. It's called INPUT:

• Inspiring
• Needed
• Personal
• Unexpected
• Topics

Here’s how to use each one to determine whether any piece of information should be stored in your Second Brain 👇

Read 10 tweets

Tiago Forte

@fortelabs

Jun 6

None of the content you consume can go on your resume

But for most of us, content consumption far outweighs content creation

Let me show you how to kickstart your creative journey using the curation method 👇

Have you heard the 90-9-1 rule? On the internet people are:

• 90% Lurkers: Mostly consume content
• 9% Interactors: Engage by commenting or sharing
• 1% Creators: Actively create new content

I have a different perspective on creating because I grew up with an artist for a father

For me creativity and art have nothing to do with the internet or creator economy

It’s a timeless pursuit of artistry

It’s just now far more accessible than ever to be an artist

Read 12 tweets

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